I read The Fountainhead as a teenager. At first I was impressed. Teenagers are easily impressed. When the climactic courtroom scene finally rolled around and Roarch rolls out a tired anti-communist screed that could have stepped out of the propaganda we had been handed in our high school “study” of Communism I finally saw what a crock the whole thing is. The guy commits a monstrous act of arson and the jury goes for nullification, why exactly? Because as a superman Roarch is above the law and above any form of human decency? Rand was a privileged Russian from a family despoiled by the revolution, so she decided that since her hereditary, unearned wealth has been taken away by “collectivists,” any collective action on the part of human beings had to be bad, and so she cooked up a sophomoric philosophy to support her resentment at the loss of inherited wealth. As if any human being lives in a vacuum. As if there were any such thing as a “self made man.” Not only is it stupid, but it is at the root of many of the problems we face today. I can barely touch an Ayn Rand book without putting on a hazmat suit.